Category: Human-Canine Bond

Good Days and Tad Days

Michael Baugh CPDT-KA, CDBC

Seriously, most of my days are good days.  My best days are Tad days.

It takes me a little more than an hour to get to the clinic where Tiffany and Tad work. On the way I think about Tad, how much he’s improved, and the work we still need to do.  I also sing along (a bit too loudly) to some of my favorite music, but that’s off the subject.

The truth is Tad is improving – a lot.  I walked into the treatment area of the clinic unannounced and he didn’t make as much as a peep.  Tiffany says he’s not barking very much at all when he’s in that area looking out into the lobby.  He doesn’t bark at all anymore when the front door chime rings; and he greets people nicely in the lobby.

We focused this visit on teaching Tad some manners in the treatment area (go to your spot and stay).  We also addressed his habit of biting for attention during play.  Play biting isn’t the same as emotionally driven fear biting or so-called aggressive biting.  Still, it hurts just the same.  I was pleased when Tad and I played a bit and he didn’t bite me.  I was equally chagrined when he gave Tiffany a few good chomps.

For dogs, the function of bites that are rooted in fear or aggression are all about making something stop or go away.  The function of play bites is to get something going.  The motivation is totally different.  How do we stop it?  First, we teach Tad how to control his play.  Good dog play includes pauses, short breaks.  Watch dogs at play and you’ll see them stop and start often.  That’s the polite way to play.  So we’re teaching Tad how to start play with humans (when we prompt it) and how to “settle,” which means sit and take a short break.  The idea is to keep these training sessions short so Tad doesn’t get excited enough to bite.  If he bites and ignores the “settle” cue, he gets a “too bad” and a time out.  For a social animal like Tad, nothing could be worse than losing a round of play for a trip to the penalty box.  That’s how he’s going to learn to watch his mouth.

Tad uses his teeth a lot playing with dogs too.  That got me wondering about the great mystery of his past.  A lot of play biters were single puppies, or puppies removed from the litter too early (prior to 7 weeks of age).  Was Tad an only child?  Did he loose his siblings too early?  Puppies are good about teaching their littermates to mind their mouthy manners. I get the sense Tad missed out on this learning.

Dogs can’t tell their own stories.  We’re left to wonder, what was Tad’s life like before Tiffany found him, skinny and sick, lost and forgotten?  So much of his behavior tells us he lived with people.  Who were they?  Did they send him away or just let him wander off?  Was it because of the biting?  Do they think about him?  Do they miss him?

I think about that on my way home, south on I-45 toward Houston, almost 6 months to the day from when Tiffany found Tad.  I don’t know, but I believe dogs draw from a deep well of forgiveness.  I like to think Tad’s moved on and doesn’t dwell on the hurt of past offenses the way we humans do.  There’s lots to learn from all this.  The thing is it’s hard to tell sometimes who’s doing the learning and who’s doing the teaching.

It’s a hot Fall day in southeast Texas and there are plump promising rain clouds on the horizon.  Tad’s improving, and it’s already better than a good day.  Time to turn up the music and sing.

In Tad We Trust

Michael Baugh CPDT-KA, CDBC

I get to see Tad again tomorrow, and the anticipation has had me thinking about the brilliant truth of teaching and learning.

Given the right set of circumstances, a learner will tend toward making the right decision.  Scientifically that means if we set up the environment correctly our student will succeed.  That includes both environmental cues and pleasant consequences for the learner.  So much for the nerdy part.  Here’s the softer part.  All of my students really are working toward success; it’s the natural tendency of progress.

A perfect learning relationship

There isn’t anything inside Tad that predestines him to behave poorly.  There’s no internal badness in dogs that we humans have to break or dominate.  Dogs, like all other learners are naturally (meaning it’s in their nature) built to discover the easiest right choices for behavior, and to act on them.  In fact, even “bad” behavior is at the time the perceived right choice for the dog.  Our job as teachers is simply to clear the path, make the choices we prefer more obvious, and reinforce those correct choices joyfully.  That’s teaching.

I always trust my client dogs to find and make the right choice.  If they don’t, I look at myself first to make adjustments.  I never look inside the dog for sinister intentions with flimsy labels like stubbornness or jealousy.  What can I change in this student’s environment to make it easier for him to make a correct behavior choice?  When he makes that correct choice, how can I tell him he got it right so that he makes that choice again in the future?  I joke that dog teaching isn’t a religion it’s a science.  Still, it takes a whole lot of faith to ask those questions, trust the dog, and trust the process.

I smile every time I remember that humans can be trusted too.  When we talk about a learner’s environment, we’re really talking about relationships.  A supportive, empathetic relationship between a teacher and a learner (and really we’re all co-learners) sets the client up to succeed, every time, without exception.  I nod respectfully to the late Carl Rogers who brought this knowledge to us.  Humans are naturally built (meaning it’s in their nature) to ascend to the highest level of success possible, given the right environment and relationships.  Abraham Maslow called that “self actualization,” and all of us are on the path.  My path as a teacher and a learner fills me with faith every day.  I trust the people I teach, and the dogs they teach in turn.  I learn from them too.  Certainly, it’s not always easy.  Tiffany will tell you that, as will Tad in his own way.  Still, we travel on together, clearing the path for our better selves, applying the science with abiding faith.

Changing Your Dog’s Behavior

Michael Baugh CPDT-KA, CDBC

Changing behavior is all about verbs, actions.  We can observe behavior in real space and time because it is physical and often includes movement.  We describe behavior with verbs.  He sits.  She runs.  They eat.  Remembering that helps us steer away from the labels we put on dogs, like dominant, dumb and stubborn.  Those are adjectives, and the only real way to change them is to stop using them.  Actions, on the other hand, we can change.

I didn’t invent the science of behavior change (I wish I had).  In fact, there isn’t a dog trainer in Houston or anywhere else for that matter who can make such a claim.  The truth is, the core concepts of animal training (including the human animal) are more than a century old.   And they are among the most tested and verified bits of knowledge in the field of psychology.  That’s a good thing really.  We dog trainers don’t have to reinvent the process.  Be careful of those who claim to.  I wrote about the science of dog training in the March 2011 issue of Houston PetTalk.  While we are always refining the way we apply the science of behavior change in dogs, the fundamentals remain the same.

Ah science.  There seems to be a collective yawn when the topic comes up.  Maybe our concept of science reminds us of boring afternoons in the classroom.  That’s not what I’m talking about here.  Using behavior science in dog training is cool, very cool.  In fact, every trick you have ever taught your dog is an example of applied behavior science.  Dolphin shows are excellent examples of it.  Behavior science is actually happening all around us.  Dog trainers use it all the time in some form or other, even if they don’t fully understand it.

Photo Courtesy: Robyn Arouty

Here’s how it breaks down.  A behavior is repeated (and becomes habit) when there’s a history of favorable consequences following the action.  How about an example?  Put on a sweater – enjoy warmth and avoid being cold.  Nice!  Here’s a doggie example.  Knock over the garbage can – enjoy snacking on the spilled food scraps.  The actions of putting on a sweater and raiding garbage cans will increase over time because of the consequences.  Changes in the environment set these learned behaviors into action.  Let’s look at the human example again.  The temperature drops when the sun goes down – put on a sweater – avoid the cold.  The temperature drop didn’t cause the action of putting on a sweater, but it did set the stage.  Perhaps the sight of a garbage can and the absence of people set the stage for the action of knocking the can over.  In both examples, it’s the consequence which keeps these actions going time and time again.

You’re on your way to understanding how to change behavior (your dogs’ actions).  Cues from the environment (we are part of our dogs’ environment, by the way) and consequences in the environment influence our dogs’ actions.  That’s very good news for those of us who live with dogs.  Why?  Because we can change their environment.  We can remove garbage cans as a potential trigger of destructive behavior.  We can also provide food-delivery toys like Kongs and Bob-a-Lots for better behavior when the dog is left alone.  Now we have the tools we need to change behavior.  We actually had them all along.

Think of anything your dog does that you’d like to change.  Remember to use verbs.  Then think of what happens right before the action, and right after.  Those are the trigger and the consequence.  Can you change either of those, or maybe both of them?   When a visitor comes to the house (trigger), and your dog jumps on her (action), does she pet him (consequence)?  How many of those environmental pieces can you influence?  Better yet, could you teach your dog that when the visitor comes (trigger), he sits politely (action), and she gives him a snack and some petting (consequence)?  I bet you could.

The best part is we’re focusing on our dog’s actions and things in the world around him we can control.  We’re not worried at all about labels.  Those are adjectives and they are not of use in changing behavior.  We’re all about verbs (like sit, and come, and look at me).  And we’re not just looking at our dog’s actions either.  The best way to change an animal’s behavior is to make a few little changes to the environment, and this often means changing our own behavior.

Now we’re talking about a wonderful noun:  Relationship.

(originally published on the Houston Pet Talk blog site)